ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at changing human-animal relations in South-central Siberia. It examines the impact of colonial forces and settler communities on Indigenous herding and hunting practices in the Eastern Sayan Mountains north of the Mongolian border. The materials presented come from the author’s long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Oka-Soiots of Buryatia. It illustrates Indigenous ecological knowledge and subsistence strategies in a mountainous taiga environment. Following some historical background, the chapter examines past and present transitions in the species composition of pastoralist Soiot households. It provides insight on why Soiots no longer breed or ride reindeer as their ancestors once had. Contextualizing this loss in a regional tendency to experiment with various animal species in a diverse landscape, the chapter concludes that the demise of reindeer in Soiot households is best understood in light of prehistoric fluctuations in species emphasis across the Altai-Sayan Region.
